The Morbetto, or The Plague of Phrygia

The subject of this print, as identified by the text on the central pedestal, is based on an excerpt from Virgil’s epic poem Aeneid, which follows the hero Aeneas on his flight from Troy to Italy after the Trojan War. In book three of the poem, Aeneas’s father interprets a message from the oracle of the god Apollo to mean that the Trojans should colonize the island of Crete. They build a city, which Aeneas names Pergamum, but are struck by a wretched plague, which brings a year of death to humans and animals. Aeneas then has a dream, as seen in the upper left, in which he learns that Apollo’s oracle intended the Trojans to occupy Italy, where Aeneas will eventually settle, becoming the ancestor of the Romans.